Interdependence of buffer gas pressure and optimum interpulse delay in a burst-mode copper halide laser

The variation of the laser output energy of a 100 pulse burst with interpulse delay has been studied for each of the copper halides CuCl, CuBr, and CuI as a function of the tube temperature and of the buffer gas pressure for helium and neon. The tube bore was 12 mm and the specific discharge energy was 3.8 mJ ċ cm^-3. For CuI, the optimum interpulse delay decreases with increase in tube temperature and with decrease in the buffer gas pressure. At each temperature and pressure the optimum interpulse delay is shorter for helium than for neon. Although the formation of the laser pulse is intimately connected with the mechanism of breakdown in the discharge tube, the effect of this mechanism on the optimum interpulse delay is small and the latter is determined mainly by the dissociation-recombination cycle of the copper halide. The increase in optimum interpulse delay with buffer gas pressure suggests that either collisions with halogen atoms or molecules or superelastic electron collisions are responsible for the decay of the population of the metastable copper atoms.